


Bears?....Oh My...

by dtbookworm



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Jokes, Bears, Bonding, Comedy, Dorks, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Funny, Gen, Happy Josh Washington, Humor, M/M, Minor Ashley Brown/Chris Hartley, Nature
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:35:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24228190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dtbookworm/pseuds/dtbookworm
Summary: Sam decides for everyone to go for a hike along the mountain to get a beautiful view of the scenery. Simple right? That is until they all wind up in a tree thanks to a roaming bear on the mountain. Yeah. Not their finest moment.
Relationships: Ashley Brown & Sam Giddings, Ashley Brown & Sam Giddings & Chris Hartley & Josh Washington, Ashley Brown/Chris Hartley, Chris Hartley & Josh Washington, Sam Giddings/Josh Washington
Comments: 12
Kudos: 37





	Bears?....Oh My...

**Author's Note:**

> Hy guys! First of all, I really loved the game Until Dawn. The character development win the game made me wonder what it would've been like if they made it into a movie or even a sequel. Out of the eight kids from Until Dawn, these four are probably my favorites...well, Ashley's probably my favorite. Bookworms gotta stick together. Enjoy!

The looks Sam was receiving were of different shades. Above her, Chris and Ashley were the very _definition_ of pissed off. Actually, that's giving them too much credit. For them, it was about 45% humor for Chris and 55% fear on the pie chart. Ashley? Oh, she was definitely 99.99% fear with little chance of humor. She was like a frantic and disgruntled airline stewardess who knew they were due for a long flight. For Josh, who was sitting next to Sam on the branch with his arms crossed and his back resting again the bark of the tree, it was his usual amused smile, a grin that was _only_ for a situation where you'd expect to find in a cartoon. Yeah, he just found the situation _so_ ludicrous that all he could do was smile. And yeah, it was _grating_ Sam's nerves because she _knew_ he wanted to say something. A witty remark. A crafted retort. When he just stared idly at her with that big goofy grin, that unflattering smile, she _had_ to say something.

"What?" She asked coldly. She pulled her winter hat over her ears, the gentle snow fall making them numb.

Josh folded his hands as if he was praying and stuck his chin over them. "Nothing Samantha. Nothing at all. I'm just sitting here enjoying the view. You know? Surveying the mountains. They truly _are_ beautiful." He inhaled and sighed, the sound emulating steam escaping from an iron. "I just love it up here. Don't you? You can see the mountains, the path we took up here, even the cable car station. Wow, oh, wow."

Sam had _no_ energy for this. She covered her eyes with her fingers, only to peek through them when Josh kept poking and prodding at her knuckles like a caged bird.

"You know what else we see, Samantha, dear? Do you know what else has graced us with its presence? Hmm?"

"Josh." She held up her finger like a teacher on the verge of violence. "Don't."

"Because let me tell ya, it sure ain't Yogi Bear or his sidekick Booboo."

Below them, the mountain bear growled, sending rippling shivers through Sam and the rest of the gang. How could a growl make your bone marrow grow so cold?

"Oh, God, oh God, oh God." Above Sam and Josh, Ashley hugged the tree for dear life. You'd think that she was hanging onto a mast from the _Titanic_ , screaming for Jack to hold on. "Did you _hear_ that?"

Beside her, Chris put a hand on her shoulder. "Ash, calm down, alright? We're safe."

"Safe? _Safe_?" Oh no. Sam recognized that tone. She clutched the branch she was sitting on, waiting for the stern lecture to come through. "We're _stuck_ in a tree in the freezing cold with, might I remind you, you dip, _no_ phone service. Nothing. And to add to our problems, there's a _freaking_ one hundred _thousand_ pound bear right below us ready to nosh on our bones! Thank God it's just a grizzly bear and not a Black Bear. _"_

Josh craned his neck to see her. "Well, when you put it like _that_ you make the situation sound..."

"Un- _bear-_ able?" Chris finished for him. He snickered to himself, looking at Ashley to see if she would let out a giggle or a snort.

Nada.

"Get it? Un- _bear_ -able? 'Cause you know."

"I got it," Ashley said, pinching the bridge of her nose. She looked like a teacher at an hour long parent teacher conference. "Unfortunately."

"Bear down below us," Chris shrugged. 

"Yeah. I can see, you dunce. Thanks."

" _Anyways_ ," Josh said over the nerdy duo. "Let me remind you all that it was our dear friend Sam who insisted that we go for a hike." He held up his hands in a _wasn't me_ motion, "So, if you wanna dog pile on the curator for this little escapade, she's sitting right here, folks."

Sam wish she had more room, more leverage to work with. The most she could do, without resulting in her and Josh falling toward the ground, was flick him against the temple. Would her new nail design of snowflakes become potentially ruined? Probably. "Ok, let's get one thing straight, Washington. And this goes for you two up there too. First of all, all I wanted was for us to go on a hike. I didn't _plan_ on us getting stuck in a tree or chased by a bear. Alright? We got that covered? Good." Sam heard her own tone and it wasn't unmitigated anger. Anger was foreign to her, the anger that was over dramatic and violent. Her anger was more...subdued, making her words sound like an elongated sigh. Yeah, when they were rescued, she would definitely work on channeling her anger. "Second of all, _Josh_ , this is _your_ mountain. 'Member? Shouldn't you have, I don't know, had _some_ type of knowledge about what animals roam on your mountain?"

"Ooh, that's a good point," Chris said from above. Josh reached up over his head and punched Chris in the shin, the best he could do so as not to fall. "Ow!" Chris said, rubbing his shin. "What? She does have a point."

"Hmm." Ashley began frowning, scrunching her lips that meant she was thinking heavily, formulating some kind of puzzle and on the verge of finding the lost piece. "You know, Sam, now that you say that it _does_ sound kind of dubious." She gave Josh a questioning glance. "Josh?"

Below, the bear roared again, causing screams to erupt from Chris and Ashley, even Sam. Man, they were the _definition_ of Beyond Scared Straight. Josh on the other hand, and not much to her surprise, remained calm and composed, giving the bear the merest of looks.

Josh rolled his shoulders, offering his palms as though he was receiving communion. "You're right, Sammy. This _is_ my mountain. And as the host I should've noticed the repercussions one may face when traveling on a snowy mountain top." His tone was suspicious to say the least. He didn't _sound_ remorseful, only _amused_. But that was Josh for you. A guy with no regrets, no second guesses.

Ashley let out a puff of air. Her nose was becoming red and her cheeks were becoming rosy under the falling snowflakes. "Well, there _were_ signs saying that there were bears on this mountain. Along with wolves and elk. I _told_ you guys that we should turn back. But did you want to listen to me? No. You didn't. And now we're paying the Fischer price."

Sam, Josh, and Chris tried to share a look due to their positions without resulting in vertigo. Ashley's vocabulary and word usage sometimes was pretty funny. Not funny in a _ha ha s_ ort of way. More like a _I can't believe you talk like a seventy year old grandmother_. "Um," Chris said, blowing air into his hands and rubbing them together. " _Fischer_ price?"

"Yeah." Ashley rubbed her nose and sniffed.

Even Sam had to marvel at that. "That's...hmm.." She scratched the nape of her neck, still stuck on the reference to the toy brand. "I've never heard _anyone_ say that before. It's kind of something I expected from Chris."

"Hey!"

"Wow, Cochise, looks like you got some competiton."

Sam saw Chris close one eye. He jutted out his jaw and did an impression of Mickey from the _Rocky_ movies. Let's just say Burgess Meredith would be clawing from the inside of his grave to choke Chris. "You think ya got a shot at the title, Ash? Because if you want the title, ya gotta sweat, ya gotta bleed, you gotta..."

Ashley clamped her fingerless gloved hand over his mouth. "Ok, seriously, _how_ are we going to get down?"

"We can't exactly go anywhere with one of the three bears down there."Josh rapped his fingers along the bark of the tree. "What if _someone_ distracts it, somehow?"

Sam's ears perked up like a cat when hearing a bag of nip. "Distract The Great Grizzly? And who exactly did you have in mind?"

Josh, carefully as he could, laid flat on his stomach on the branch and placed his chin over his interlocked fingers. He fluttered his eyelashes. His eyes shimmered like moss in a creek. "Well, Sam, you _are_ the most athletic and the most diligent. Hey, one could even call you considerate. And you like a little adventure, don't you?"

If there was a prize for World's Best Douchebag On A Branch, he would definitely take the prize with a standing ovation. Sam only scoffed and crossed her arms. "Riiiiight, uh huh. Yeah, I appreciate your confidence in my physical prowess, but unfortunately I have a _slight_ fear of, you know, getting _mauled_ to death by a killer bear. Some of us enjoy living."

"Well, Chris sure as shit on a toilet seat can't do it. Neither can Bambi up there."

"Oh. Oh. Ok. Uh, if _that's_ the case," Chris swiped his finger between himself and Ashley. "Then how did both of us get much higher than you guys? Hmm?"

"Adrenaline. It does wonders. Much better than crack in my opinion. Your junk doesn't fall off and you get to keep your brain."

"Your junk doesn't _literally_ fall off. Does it?"

"Hmm. No, I think it more so shrinks. Hell if I know. It's possible it just disintegrates.

"Funny, I always thought that..."

"Will you two dorks stop it?" Ashley put an end to their never ending talk of nonsense. She took on a calmer tone. "Sam, we wouldn't let you distract that thing. There's gotta be another way."

Sam sat up a bit because her butt was falling asleep. To think all those squats in the gym only lead her to be stuck in a tree with the rest of the peanut gallery. "Has anyone tried calling?"

Josh gasped a little _too_ loudly, as if his lungs were filling with cyanide and mustard gas. "What? Call? In the good year 2014? Why Sam, I, we haven't thought of that. Yeah, let me just pull out my phone and... _of course, we tried that!_ But like I said, there are _no_ cell towers up here and the closest one is at least, what, about ten miles away? So bad hot spot my friends."

Ashley tapped the hem of her beanie, as if her finger was a typewriter figuring out multiple endings for a story. "Ooh. I got it. What if we made loud noises? We could scare him away."

"Could work," Sam said. She peered down at the bear again. It circled the base of the tree, its burly limbs like a well oiled piston machine ready for anything. Huffs of visible cold air escaped its black nose, but the bear itself didn't shiver. 

"Or better yet," Chris said, piping up. "I know another more scarier, balls off the walls, guaranteed individual who's much _more_ frightening." He cleared his throat dramatically like a stuffy Englishman, cupped his hands to his mouth and he bellowed. "EMILY!!!"

The explosiveness of his voice caused Ashely to jump slightly, then upon hearing what he said, began to snort. It was followed by a tired laugh, though it was threatening to burst to become a full on gut wheezing laugh. "Chris," she said, lightly shoving his shoulder. "That's not _funny_."

"I don't know," Josh said, rubbing his chin. "Emily's pretty nasty. She'd turn it into a new handbag and some fur trimmed boots in a minute."

"Ok, alright, stop. We are not calling for Emily." Sam massaged her forehead, while at the same time narrowing her eyes to see the lodge a good distance away. "Besides, no one can hear us."

Sam surveyed the mountains in the distant, high snow capped peaks of the Earth's crust blending in with the midnight blue sky. Trees swayed in the distance, the snow sparkling and twinkling like jewels from a tiara. No matter how many times she came up here, she always thought it wasn't real, that there couldn't be a place like this to exist. And, okay, sure the bear _did_ cause her to not fully relax and take in all the splendid beauty of the mountain, but at least she wasn't alone. She was with the best and most strangest people in the world. "Can't deny the view though,: Sam said softly, pointing toward the mountain.

Josh scooted closer to her, his shoulder brushing hers. Suddenly, the warmth of his flannel mingled with the leather of her jacket. It was the kind of warm that reminded Sam of light steaming through a cafe window, tantalizing and sleep inducing. "Yeah. It's pretty amazing. Never really noticed before."

"See? Now aren't you glad that we got the chance to do this?"

"Oh, yeah, for sure. Except with, you know, the bear."

"Yeah," she sighed. "The bear."

"That _you_ should've distracted."

"Putz."

Sam looked to Josh, examining his face. His usual smirk was gone as well as the mischievous glint that always seemed to be held within his moss green eyes. To her, he looked taken aback, stunned at the way how nature could reveal itself as one of God's mysteries, or whoever ran the universe. _This_ Josh, the _vulnerable_ Josh, was her favorite. Not to say that the sarcastic, witty, so he claims, Josh is any less fun. No, she enjoyed that Josh too. But looking into his eyes now, close as they were, with their fingertips barely touching on the branch, she glimpsed into an open window. Through the window, there was a blue daffodil or maybe it was a blue blossom. Either way, its petals opened slowly to reveal something primordial, a passion that went past friends, a desire that went beyond lovers. It was burned cleaned by fire, sharpened by Flintstone that made Sam's heart feel like a lighter was placed underneath it, warming her blood against the cold of Blackwood Pines.

He started moving in. It was slow, sluggish, the way you move when you want to preserve your favorite milkshake or the way you stay out late on summer nights to gather in the final dying hours of daylight. Sam felt her eyelids close and, oh shit on a Ritz cracker, did she feel her stomach drop when he put his hand on top of hers. 

They got closer.

She could smell mint gum and a hint of malt liquor.

Closer.

Closer.

Closer.

"I got it!" Chris shouted from above. "I got a bar! I got a bar on my phone!"

The moment shattered. Sam sprang apart, nearly falling off the branch if Josh hadn't wrapped his arm around her waist. God damnit, why couldn't they be rescued a little later? If only Chris had gotten a bar on his phone _after_...after whatever would happen, after whatever was about to happen.

Josh cleared his throat and groaned with his mouth closed. "Yeah, Cochise. Nice timing. Real nice."

Sam couldn't help but smile at Josh's pout, at the way he crossed his arms like a child on timeout. "Hey," she said, patting his knee. "We're saved."

"Yeah, yeah," he said, looking down at the bear. The bear let out a roar. Not a _I'm gonna kill you_ roar. More like a gruff or whatever it's called that escapes the bear's mouth. "You and me both, buddy. Thanks for all your help, though."

Huh? What did he mean by...wait a second. Wait a goddamn second.

"Josh?" Sam asked, stretching out the _o_ in his name so it sounded like _Joooosh_.

"Hmm?" He responded.

"Did you... _plan_ this?" She looked up to Chris and Ashley. The sight was something from an ABC family movie where people put up Christmas lights, only to end up falling. Ashley was holding Chris from behind, steadying his legs so that he could raise the phone higher so the call didn't drop.

"Plan this? Moi?" Josh laughed, licking his upper teeth. "Well, as you know I don't like taking _all_ the credit. If you hadn't forced Clueless and Jumpy up there to join us, we would all just be chillin' in the lodge." He slung his arm around Sam's shoulder. " 'Member what I said about traumatic experiences bringing people together? Well, was I right or was I _right_?"

Sam was speechless, her voice box unable to form the words she _wanted_ to say. Was he crazy? Well, yes. "So you risked our _lives_ just so you and I could hang?"

"Yeah." Josh folded his hands between his legs. He swung his legs as if he was on a swing. "Did it work, Ms. Giddings?" He said quietly.

The earnestness in his voice made Sam's bewilderment and anger subside. _Slightly_. She thought back to the walk up here. She thought about how josh stuck close to her, how he listened intently as she explained the snowfall ands how it made her feel. He didn't interrupt her when she told him that she used to take walks with her mom all the time through the snow, sometimes stopping for a hot chocolate at their favorite cafe. And just recently, they were about to, at least Sam thought, kiss only to to be interrupted by the revelation that Chris managed to finally get a signal.

Guess that whole Butterfly Effect thing really was a marvel.

Sam sighed, answering Josh's question. "Yeah, in a weird, obscure, completely, dare I say, _fucked_ up way of doing it. But it did."

"Whooh. That's good. 'Cause I..."

"Let me finish." She held a finger in front of his face. "I don't need to have a traumatic experience to get closer to you. We already have a connection, and it's powerful all on its own."

Josh melded his fingers between Sam's, raised her hand, and kissed it. "You really are the mom of the group, aren't you?"

"Well, _someone_ has to be. Who else is gonna keep you guys from doing stupid things like..."

A shout from above interrupted Sam. She could see, or missed, a person falling, hitting branches on the way down. It was Chris. She recognized the scream. He landed flat on his back like he was beginning to make a snow angel.

"Chris!" Ashley shouted. "Oh God, no!" Immediately, she began scrambling down the tree. Sam and Josh did the same.

The three circled around Chris and knelt. "Cochise? Chris? You okay?" Josh patted Chris's cheeks.

Chris let out a moan, like an elderly man lowering himself into the chair. "Uh-yup. Yup. Yup. Yup. I'm fine."

"Can you stand?" Sam said. She helped Chris to his feet, the latter clinging to her like a buoy in an ocean. "There you go, big guy."

Ashley hugged Chris, placing her ear against his chest. "I told you you would fall. I _told_ you. Don't scare me like that. You could've died."

Sam noticed Chris blushing as he wrapped his arms around the red head's frame. She also noticed something else too. "Uh guys?"

"What?" They all answered, close to simultaneously.

"The bear's gone."

They all looked around. Well, sure as shit, the bear had gone away, no where in sight.

"Well, how about that," Josh said, dusting snow from Chris along with Ashley.

"Well, it _still_ could be near," Ashley said, looking around frantically. "So don't get your hopes up."

"Right," Sam said. "Alright, so, the mountain rangers are on their way. The best thing we should do is wait in the tree until they get here."

"Agreed," Josh said. "And uh, Cochise, why don't you take the branch _closest_ to the ground?"

"Can do." Chris climbed first, more clumsily now that the adrenaline had depleted itself. When he managed to get on the branch, he held his hand out for Ashley, who also displayed the same movement's like a newborn foal.

Josh stood at the base of the tree, extending his arm. "After you."

"Oh, a _true_ gentleman," Sam said, easily reaching for a limb and climbing. She pulled Josh up along with her. He was halfway up before Sam quickly, making sure that Chris and Ashley didn't see, pecked him on the lips. It was a swift motion that wished would've lasted longer, but with the present company now on the same level branches, it would have to do.

Josh silently joined her on the branch they previously shared. He laid his chin on top of Sam's shoulder, whispering in Sam's ear. "Think we could do that again?"

Sam turned to face him. "Maybe," she said to his cheek. "Just no more stunts."

"I can't in good conscience promise you that."

"Of course you can't." But that was ok with her. It was more than ok.


End file.
